SAR-OSL dating of Late Pleistocene loess in Southern Romania using fine and coarse-quartz

Abstract

Loess deposits cover significant areas in Europe, extending from NW-France and Belgium through to central Europe, the Ukraine and Western Russia. The loess palaeosol sequences of the Carpathian Basin-Lower Danube region (Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria) are thought to represent the most continuous and high resolution archives of regional climate and environmental change during the Late and Middle Pleistocene in SE Europe and a link between similar deposits in central Europe and Eurasia. However, in comparison to other loess sequences elsewhere in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, the deposits in Romania have been much less extensively studied. Luminescence dating is, at present, the only method that allows establishing an absolute chronology for loess deposits by virtue of its ability to directly date the moment of sediment deposition. Moreover, the aeolian nature of loess ensures that the luminescence signal is completely reset prior to deposition, a prime requisite for luminescence dating. Thus, loess sediments are ideal materials for developing, testing and applying luminescence techniques. This approach is essential for securely linking loess records from Romania in a chronologically reliable regional framework and to extend this information to other sites from central and eastern European loess belt, in order to understand past paleoenvironmental dynamics at both regional and continental scales.